Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  In the 1999 elections, the Central Electoral Commission played a cruel joke on the Liberal Democrats. The LDPR list, consisting of a large number of commercial positions, filled by quasi-criminal businessmen, was not registered. On the very eve of the elections, when Zhirinovsky, hurriedly assembling another list and registering as the “Zhirinovsky Bloc,” launched the advertising campaign “The Zhirinovsky Bloc Is the LDPR,” the Central Electoral Commission registered the LDPR, but without Zhirinovsky. The Liberal Democrats were saved from this fatal split (LDPR without Zhirinovsky as a rival of the Zhirinovsky Bloc) only by the intervention of the Presidium of the Supreme Court. In the 1999 elections, the Zhirinovsky Bloc received 6 percent of the vote and finished fifth; half a year later, in the 2000 presidential elections, Zhirinovsky himself finished fourth with 2.7 percent. The LDPR fraction in the Duma from 2000 to 2003 was the smallest; it began with 17 delegates and ended with 13. It was headed by Zhirinovsky’s son Igor Lebedev, as the party’s head had become vice-speaker of the Duma.

  LIBERALISM

  Actively exploiting the nostalgia for national greatness (and for the USSR with its powerful army and special services, but without “Party nomenklatura”), “enlightened nationalism,” and anti-Western sentiments; castigating the “radical reformers” and denouncing efforts at breaking the country both from without and within, the LDPR enjoys significant support from surviving groups and strata that do not share the communist ideology. The populist brightness, spiritedness, and outstanding political and acting abilities of Zhirinovsky play an important role, bringing him into sharp contrast with ordinary Russian politicians. The LDRP has especially strong support among the military and those Russian citizens who lived in Russia’s national republics and SNG (Union of Independent States) countries among residents of bordering nations. The LDPR had its greatest success in regional elections from 1996 to 1998, when its candidates won as governor in Pskov oblast, mayor in the capital Tuva, parliament in Krasnodar Krai, and the Novosibirsk city assembly; a LDPR candidate came close to victory in the presidential elections in the Mari Republic as well. The LDPR results in the 1999-2002 term were significantly weaker, but with the expansion of NATO, the war in Iraq, and so forth, the LDPR ratings rose again. At its reregistration in April 2002, the LDPR declared nineteen thousand members and fifty-five regional branches. See also: CONSTITUTION OF 1993; ZHIRINOVSKY, VLADIMIR VOLFOVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. McFaul, Michael and Petrov, Nikolai, eds. (1995). Previewing Russia’s 1995 Parliamentary Elections. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. McFaul, Michael; Petrov, Nikolai; and Ryabov, Andrei, eds. (1999). Primer on Russia’s 1999 Duma Elections. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

  NIKOLAI PETROV

  LIBERALISM

  Any discussion of Russian liberalism must start with a general definition of the term. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy emphasizes liberals’ advocacy of individual liberty and freedom from unjustified restraint. In the nineteenth century, liberalism had a strong economic strain, stressing industrialization and laissez-faire economics. With one notable exception, Russia’s first liberals were little concerned with economic affairs, as the country remained mired in a semi-feudal agrarian economy. And at all times, the quest for political liberty was at the heart of Russian liberalism.

  While it is impossible to select a starting point that will satisfy everyone, an early figure in the quest for freedom was Alexander Radishchev, a well-educated and widely traveled Russian nobleman. He is best known for his A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (1790) that vividly exposed the evils of Russian serfdom, an institution little different from slavery in the American south of the time. An enraged Empress Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796) demanded his execution but settled for Radishchev’s banishment to Siberia. Pardoned in 1799, he was nonetheless a broken man who committed suicide in 1802. Yet Radishchev served as an inspiration to both radicals and liberals for decades to come.

  In particular he inspired the Decembrist movement of 1825. This group of noble military officers attempted to seize power in an effort so confusing that they are known simply by the month of their failed coup. Five of the conspirators were executed, but many of them advocated the abolition of serfdom and autocracy, two hallmarks of early Russian liberalism.

  Under Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855), virtually all talk of real reform earned the attention of the secret police. Yet some Russians found a way to express themselves; most important was the historian, Timofei Granovsky, who used his lectern to express his hostility to serfdom, advocacy of religious intolerance, and his admiration for parliamentary regimes. His influence was largely limited, however, to his pupils, including one of Russia’s most famous liberals, the philosopher and historian Boris Chicherin.

  Chicherin’s political career began under the reform-minded Emperor Alexander II (r. 1855-1881) and included both theoretical and practical pursuits. The author of several books and innumerLIBERALISM able articles and reviews, Chicherin was also a professor and an active politician. His liberalism included a vigorous defense of personal liberties protected by law and a consistent rejection of violence to achieve political change. He was the first prominent Russian liberal to defend a free market as a prerequisite for political liberty, squarely breaking with the emerging socialist movement.

  Another important liberal was Ivan Petrunke-vich. Following two attempts on the life of Emperor Alexander II, the government issued an appeal for public support against terrorism. In response, Petrunkevich declared in 1878 that the people must resist not only terror from below, but also terror from above. That same year, he met with five terrorists in an effort to unite all opponents of the status quo, an effort that failed because the terrorists rejected Petrunkevich’s demand that they disavow violence. In an 1879 pamphlet he insisted upon the convocation of a constituent assembly to guarantee basic civil liberties. Despite frequent clashes with the government, Petrunkevich remained active in politics even after his exile following the Bolshevik revolution.

  At the turn of the century, Russia was on the eve of revolution. Rapid industrialization under appalling conditions fostered a radical working class movement, while a surge in the peasant population produced widespread land hunger. At the same time a middle class of capitalists and professionals was emerging, and from it came many of Russia’s leading liberals.

  The last emperor, Nicholas II (1894-1917), proved singularly incapable of handling the Herculean task of ruling Russia. He quickly dashed any hopes liberals may have entertained for reform when he dismissed notions of diluting his autocratic power as “senseless dreams.” Nonetheless, the liberals remained active.

  In 1901 they established their own journal, Liberation, and two years later an organization, the Union of Liberation. When Russia exploded in the Revolution of 1905, the Union coordinated a movement that ranged from strikes to terrorist assassinations. Nicholas made concessions that only fueled the rebellion and in April, liberals were demanding the convocation of a constituent assembly to create a new order. In October, Nicholas issued the October Manifesto, guaranteeing basic civil liberties and the election of a national assembly, the Duma, with real political power. By then the liberals had their own political party, the Constitutional Democrats (Cadets). It seemed that liberalism’s great opportunity had arrived. At the very least, several liberals achieved national prominence in the years after 1905. Pyotr Struve, an economist and political scientist, originally embraced Marxism, but by 1905, he espoused a radical liberalism that called for full civil l
iberties and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. He was elected to the Second Duma and supported Russia’s entrance into the World War I. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Struve joined the unsuccessful opposition and soon left Russia for good.

  The most prominent liberal of the late imperial period was the historian, Pavel Milyukov. In 1895 his political views cost him a teaching position, and he used the time to travel abroad, visiting the United States. His public lectures emphasized the need to abolish the autocracy and the right to basic civil liberties. But Milyukov also realized that liberalism was doomed if it failed to address the land issue in an overwhelmingly agrarian nation.

  Milyukov supported Russia’s participation in World War I, but by 1916 he was so exasperated with the catastrophic prosecution of the war that he publicly implied that treason had penetrated to the highest levels of the government. When the autocracy collapsed in February 1917, Milyukov became the foreign minister of the provisional government, the highest office ever reached by a Russian liberal. It did not last long. Under great pressure, in May he issued a promise to the allies that Russia would remain in the war to the bitter end. Antiwar demonstrations ensued, and Mi-lyukov was forced to resign. He died in France in 1943.

  Despite the efforts of Milyukov, Struve, and others, Russian liberalism increasingly fell between two stools. On the one hand were the revolutionaries who had nothing but contempt for liberals with their willingness to compromise with the imperial system. The regime’s supporters, on the other hand, saw the liberals as little better than bomb-throwing revolutionaries. In a society as polarized as Russia was in 1914, with a political system as archaic as its leader was incompetent, any form of political moderation was likely doomed.

  The Communists thoroughly crushed all opposition, but some brave individuals continued to call for human freedom, the most important being Andrei Sakharov. A physicist by training, he was a man of extraordinary intelligence and courage.

  LIGACHEV, YEGOR KUZMICH

  Admitted as a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences at the age of thirty-two, he was deprived of the lavish privileges accorded the scientific elite of the USSR on account of his subsequent advocacy of human rights and civil liberties. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Sakharov returned to national prominence; he died almost exactly two years before the demise of the Soviet Union on Christmas 1991.

  In the Russian Federation of the early twenty-first century, political terms such as liberal, conservative, radical, and so on are almost meaningless. But liberalism in its more traditional sense won a major victory in the 1996 presidential election when Boris Yeltsin defeated the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov. Yeltsin’s liberal credentials were later much criticized, but he successfully defended freedom of speech, the press, and religion, and he initiated free market reforms. At the very least, liberalism became more powerful in Russia than any time in the past. See also: CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY; DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; MILYUKOV, PAUL NIKOLAYEVICH; NICHOLAS II; RADISHCHEV, ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH; SAKHAROV, ANDREI DMITRIEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fischer, George. (1958). Russian Liberalism: From Gentry to Intelligentsia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hamburg, Gary. (1992). Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Roosevelt, Patricia. (1986). Apostle of Russian Liberalism: Timofei Granovsky. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners. Stockdale, Melissa K. (1996). Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880-1918. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Timberlake, Charles, ed. (1972). Essays on Russian Liberalism. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Walicki, Andrzej. (1986). Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism. Oxford: Clarendon.

  HUGH PHILLIPS

  Yevsei Grigorevich Liberman’s education and career were erratic and undistinguished. He graduated from the law faculty at Kiev University in 1920 and then earned a candidate of sciences degree at the Institute of Labor in Kharkov. In 1930 he began to work in the Kharkov Engineering-Economics Institute. During World War II he was evacuated to Kyrgyzstan, where he held positions in the Ministry of Finance and the Scientific Research Institute of Finance. He returned to the Kharkov Engineering-Economics Institute after the war and in 1963 became a professor of statistics at Kharkov University. At various times he was also the director of a machinery plant and a consultant to machinery plants.

  Liberman’s personal experience in actual enterprises helped him to understand the shortcomings of the Soviet incentive system. As early as his doctoral dissertation in 1957, he suggested reducing the number of planning indicators for firms and focusing on profit instead. In 1962 he became a cause c?l?bre when he published an article in Pravda that proposed making profit the sole success indicator in evaluating enterprise performance. Since Liberman was not a significant player in economic reform circles, it is thought that others, such as Vasily Sergeyevich Nemchinov, engineered publication of this article as a trial balloon. Thus he was more significant as a lightning rod around which controversy swirled than as a thinker with a sophisticated understanding of economics or of the complex task of transforming the Soviet administrative command system. See also: NEMCHINOV, VASILY SERGEYEVICH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Liberman, E. G. (1971). Economic Methods and the Effectiveness of Production. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press. Treml, Vladimir G. (1968). “The Politics of Liberman-ism.” Soviet Studies 29:567-572.

  ROBERT W. CAMPBELL

  LIBERMAN, YEVSEI GRIGOREVICH

  (1897-1983), economist who proposed making profit the main success indicator for Soviet enterprises.

  LIGACHEV, YEGOR KUZMICH

  (b. 1920), a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (December 1983 to mid-1990), and member of the Politburo (April 1985 to mid-1990).

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  LIKHACHEV, DMITRY SERGEYEVICH

  Yegor Ligachev criticized Gorbachev’s reforms and Yeltsin’s leadership style. PACH/CORBIS-BETTMANN. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.. Ligachev was deeply disturbed by the collapse of Communist power in Eastern Europe and the flaccid response to those events on the part of the Gorbachev regime. Nor did he support the general secretary’s decision to end the CPSU’s monopoly of power in February 1990. In the spring of 1990 he moderated his critique of the regime in an apparent effort to win election as deputy general secretary at the Twenty-eighth Party Congress, but he lost the election by a wide margin. Following the reform of the Secretariat and Politburo at the congress he retired from both bodies. He did not fully condemn the attempted coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, but he vigorously denied charges of direct involvement in these events. See also: ANDREYEVA, NINA ALEXANDROVNA; AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; GLASNOST; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; PERESTROIKA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Harris, Jonathan. (1989). “Ligachev on Glasnost and Per-estroika.” In Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 706. Pittsburgh, PA: University Center for Russian and East European Studies. Ligachev, Egor. (1993). Inside Gorbachev’s Kremlin. New York: Pantheon Books.

  JONATHAN HARRIS

  Yegor Ligachev was a leading orthodox critic of many aspects of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of reforms. From 1985 until late 1988 he served as the party’s informal second secretary responsible for the supervision of official ideology and personnel management. During this period, he clashed with Secretary Alexander Yakovlev over cultural and ideological policies and openly assailed the cultural liberalization fostered by glas-nost and the growing public criticism of the USSR’s past.

  While Ligachev publicly endorsed perestroika in general terms, he opposed Gorbachev’s efforts to limit party officials’ responsibilities and to expand the legislative authority of the soviets. He was widely identified with the orthodox critique of perestroika provided by Nina Andreyeva in early 1988. At the Nineteenth Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in mid-1988, Ligachev refused to publicly endorse Gorbachev
’s reform of the Secretariat and its subordinate apparat. In September 1988 he lost his position as second secretary and was named director of the newly created agricultural commission of the Central Committee.

  LIKHACHEV, DMITRY SERGEYEVICH

  (1906-1999), cultural historian, religious philosopher.

  Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachev was known as a world-renowned academic, literary and cultural historian, sociologist, religious philosopher, prisoner of the gulag, and preservationist of all kinds of Russian culture. But he was much more. By the end of his life he had become one of the most respected citizens of Russia. As an academic, Likhachev was the preeminent expert of his generation on medieval Russian culture, and the literature of the tenth through seventeenth centuries in particular, perhaps the most prolific writer and researcher on Russian culture in the twentieth century. One of his obituaries described him as “one of the symbols of the twentieth century . . . [whose] life was devoted to education . . . the energetic service of the highest ideals of humanism, spirituality, genuine patriotism, and citizenship . . . consistently preaching eternal principles of moralLITHUANIA AND LITHUANIANS ity and conscientiousness . . . a person of the rarest erudition and generous spirit, who educated a whole galaxy of worthy students” (Kultura No. 36, 7-13 October, 1999, 1). Another said, “[He] took the helm of the ship of Russian culture and steered it to a hopefully better world.” He was a greatly talented historian and many of his more than one thousand publications were known throughout the world’s academic community. By his life’s end he had been granted honorary titles by sixteen national academies and European universities, as well as several high honors from his native land, including Hero of Soviet Labor. He served as a researcher in various Soviet academic institutions of renown, gained the title of university professor, and for his seminal work on the Russian classic, Lay of Igor’s Campaign, was received into the Soviet Academy of Sciences. His very active life also led him to membership in the Russian Duma after the fall of the Soviet Union. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; HISTORIOGRAPHY; LAY OF IGOR’S CAMPAIGN